fishers, surfers and casters

Well, that’s what all the road signs read, and it isn’t just because Kerala is amazingly beautiful, with every piece of dirt supporting lush coconut jungle, as you can see in this video.

It’s also because Kerala is one of the world’s most religious places on the planet, and when it comes to religious diversity, may be one of the world’s most peaceful. Though predominantly Hindu, Kerala claims to be the oldest Christian and Muslim missionary outposts. It is believed St Thomas arrived with his Gospel as early as 60AD, and many say that European colonialists of the second millennium were so cut to find the place already Christianised. Here we have photos of the Syrian Orthodox Church of St Thomas (you know him, that guy who didn’t really believe Jesus came back, and according to the Syrians, was the only witness of Mary’s Assumption), and a complex to commemorate his arrival at the point of his disembarkation. The shrine inside allegedly contains a piece of his arm. A bell tolls automatically at the shrine’s opening, calling all pilgrims, including many who have come from some other parts of his corpse in Ortona, Italy.

According to my good mate Fr Jose, my gracious host throughout my stay, Kerala is about forty percent, Christian, and the Catholic:Protestant:Evangelical ration is about 2:1:1. Though of all religious advertising that I could see on TV and posters and billboards on every street, most were either Hindu or Evangelical. Indeed January and February seem to be the state’s festival season, and the time for the world’s pilgrims to come together, whether they be Hindu, Hare Krishna, Jane or how-cool-is-JC-right-now dudes. And like Hindus, Christians proudly wear their religion of the sleeve, and their house, and their car etc. I couldn’t tell if way they adorned themselves or their belongings was more to evangelise than it was some breed of Animist-Christian sanctification.

Though there are about as many Christians in Kerala as there are Hindus, Islam is running a very close third (a ratio of about 4:4:3). Islam has been here since the seventh century, and was welcomed by the people, to the extent that the first mosque was commissioned by the then Hindu king. The mosque itself contains a museum that celebrates not only Islam but the state’s Hindu and Christian heritage. Its curator wanted to offer a tour of the entire complex, and told much of how the three religions lived and worked in harmony in Kerala, but he found it difficult to share my attention with all the attendants present who wanted to tell me their own stories of the place. I think they saw me as a bit of a weird novelty, and assumed that because I greeted them in Arabic, that I was Muslim. I didn’t really try to correct them– not sure if that was a good thing to do or not.

This above is the mosque, and below is a model of the three major religious centres of Kerala, used in presentations on the place’s history.

But Kerala is also Hindu, and I saw brilliant examples of this. I have actually no idea whether these were weekly events or if it was a particular time of year, but I saw houses and families everywhere being greeted by elephants and drums, and music seemed to fill the air.

Ah, elephants, so many elephants…

In the middle of my first night in the country I was woken by what I thought was the boogey man finally coming to get me, only to discover a little later (after much embarassment) that my room overlooked a hidden Hindu temple, where people meet at all hours to chant. It eventually became my nightly lullaby… (sorry there’s not much to see in this video, but it is like 4am).

Heidi Campbell just posted a link on her blog about a new report from the Alban Institute called The Networked Congregation. The front page promises some interested thoughts on congregational life amid Web 2.0. Unfortunately I totally suck at reading lengthy work on a screen, so I’m saving the report to PDF to read later. But it’s come at a great time for me as I’m thinking about what makes a religious community in the late modern information age.

Recent reports from the National Church Life Survey show that in the last decade of the twentieth century church attendance in Australia was in steady decline. Mainstream Protestant denominations experienced a decline that was by-and-large offset by increases in Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, but this was not enough to counter the decline in the Roman Catholic church, which accounts for half of Australia’s Christians (Bellamy and Castle, 2004: 7-8). While the Evangelical offset of mainstream Protestant decline may indicate that Australian Christians are changing denominations, research shows these churches (such as the Assemblies of God, the Christian City Churches and the Christian Revival Crusade) have the highest incidence of “drifting out”, i.e. of people leaving these churches and forsaking church attendance altogether (Sterland, Powell et al., 2006: 12-13). Despite immigration’s account for growth of other religions, like Islam, it appears that Australia is an increasingly secular nation.

Theorists such as Bauman (1998: 70) would attribute this decline to late modern culture’s call for peak experiences but desire to keep religious institutions away from them. For Casanova (1994: 40-42), the “privatisation” of religion is the product of an ideological campaign of modernity, both for freedom of conscience from ecclesial control, and for the progression of institutional differentiation for the capitalist economy. Casanova sees the persistence of the churches to maintain a presence in the public sphere as not a resistance to secularisation but a “deprivatisation” of religion in moral response to capitalism, consumerist worldviews or their threats to traditional worldviews (1994: 228).

Turner’s secularisation theory aligns with that of Casanova in that he sees the privatisation of religion as the result of the modernist campaign to relegate institutions founded on “ineffable” truths to the private sphere for the benefit of modern democracy and liberty.

In a democratic environment, the very idea that some truths are ineffable contradicts the ethos of modern society in which everybody assumes a right to understand or at least to have the relevant information. Democracy tends to promote plain speech and political campaigns are based on personalities and slogans and not only policies. The control of ineffable knowledge is compromised and the whole idea of hierarchically organized wisdom evaporates. We are moving from the age of revelation to the age of information where everything is, at least in principle, effable. The resulting crisis of authority is perhaps the real meaning of secularization [...].

(2008: 221)

He departs from Casanova’s theory in his understanding of the re-entrance of Christianity in the public sphere. For Turner, modern public religion is “low-intensity”, favouring the practical, attractive and therapeutic at the expense of “authentic and viable forms of personal piety” (2008: 232). Even religion that appears to challenge consumer culture, like Fundamentalism, enters the public sphere as a marketplace, “selling a lifestyle based on special diets, alternative education, health regimes and mentalities” (2008: 233). Even if (post)modern, individualist, and consumerist society has allowed religion to speak its values, it has determined the conditions on which it can communicate.

The emerging church movement is seen in the context of religious “deprivatisation” and the conditions with which Christianity is allowed a public face. Driscoll (2006) identifies the emerging church movement as the third and last in a series of models, based on their level of engagement in the public sphere. Traditional expressions of Christianity, such as Catholicism and mainstream Protestantism, is labelled “Church 1.0”, that claim to retain their privileged place in modern culture, though have failed to retain an authoritative voice in postmodern culture. “Church 2.0”, appealing to public audiences and engaging in a “culture war” to regain the lost position of cultural privilege, and managed as businesses that market spiritual goods and services (Driscoll, 2006: 87-88).

The emerging church is model “3.0”, that accepts in a postmodern and pluralistic society the “culture war” is won only at the expense of authentic spirituality, and therefore not worth fighting (Driscoll, 2006: 88). For Brian McLaren, a popular American voice of the movement, the emerging church seeks an alternative to the secular dilemma, where Christians choose either “a private, personal spirituality unconnected to public life” or “a public civil religion that compromises with partisan politics” (Streett, 2006: 11).

Generations in this half of the century had grown more educated than those before, and had allowed themselves to question the authority of their denominational patriarchs. Not surprising then, that 1963 saw the peak of participation in traditional religious communities in Australia. The Death of God movement of the 1960s, informed by the works of Barth and Bonhoeffer, led in part by the 1963 publication of Honest to God, written by John Robinson, then Anglican Bishop of Woolwich, criticised contemporary Christian theology and claimed that while traditional images of God were absent in the secular world, a sense of the sacred can no longer be found among the cloisters of the Church (Altizer and Hamilton, 1966: 28-36, 39). Instead, the Christian way of life should be found by leaving the church and into secular life. Radical liberal groups, including the Australian Student Christian Movement, claimed the failure of Australia’s mainline churches to listen to and speak to the world, calling them to abandon futile moral laws and turn their attention to service and justice (Breward, 1993: 169; Thompson, 1994: 123).

While Liberal Christians laid their attacks on the Church for distancing itself from society, in later decades radical Conservatives set their aim for governments. From 1965 through the eighties, State governments had progressively freed community laws from Protestant morality, including restrictions to hours of licensed venues, the legalisation of betting and establishments of State lotteries, legalisation of abortion and decriminalisation of homosexuality. In response to a perceived downward spiral into “hedonistic secularism” the Festival of Light grew into a major conservative pressure group campaign. Born in South Australia, its grasped a larger stronghold in Sydney, where even now conservatives appear to have a stronger voice, in a State where church attendance is generally lower and amidst greater religious diversity than national averages (Thompson, 1994: 116-118).

In later decades, organisations such as Catch the Fire Ministries and the Australian Prayer Networks would do well to catch the attention of state and federal politicians in their claims for a presence of Christian spirit and fervour in the running of the country. Some Christians organised themselves into political parties, calling for Australia’s moral and spiritual renewal, and a return to “family values”. Such parties include Family First and the Christian Democratic Party. Due partly to the strong presence of Evangelical churches in mainstream media, prominent politicians have found in them a support for a conservative agenda, not least the country’s previous Prime Minister, the Hon John Howard, and Treasurer, the Hon Peter Costello. Mainstream news media has responded to politicians’ interest in these groups, to turn their own attention to religious debates happening in denominations and the impact on Australian life. The place of religion in political life, especially in the face of a growing Muslim immigrant and refugee population, and terrorism post-9/11, is a popular article for consideration by any radio or television news program.

It is growing apparent that Australians define the Christian identity less by their involvement in a denomination and more by their stance on a variety of political, religious and social issues, like abortion, sexual morality, the ordination of women and homosexuals, stem-cell research and our responsibility to the environment. People draw from a large market of sources for resources to form religious identity, outside their local religious community and its parent denominational authority. These views are still dividing people within traditional institutional structures and encouraging alliances among previously separated groups.

In 2005, Australian church organisations pooled finances together and employed an advertising agency to create a series of radio and television commercials, plus a website that offered information about the communities and its people. The advertising campaign was titled “Jesus – all about life” and featured young adults, parents and older people expressing their interest in the person of Jesus Christ. Every television and radio advertisement intentionally omitted any reference to the churches involved, and even Christianity itself. For the first time in Australian media, Christians refused to portray themselves in their religious promotion. Only in the website was there a small reference to Australian Christian churches, and only links to their own denominational website and contact information.

The ad campaign showed a realisation that Australians were, by-and-large, indifferent to Christian identity and community, though had some interest in faith and spirituality. It made apparent that denominations themselves know the Australian religious community is not defined by institutional membership or participation.